Missionaria Protectiva

        King fashioned his first guitar from a cigar box, with a tree branch neck and strung it with a strand of broom wire. When he finally got a guitar, being left-handed he simply turned the right-hander upside down and played with the strings reversed.         This down-stringing made his action very pliable. Albert could play a whole lick by bending his top string by a 4th and letting it down to create other intervals.        After various attempts at a record deal he moved to Memphis and was signed by soul label Stax, with superb house band Booker T & The MG’s. The MG’s backed King on his legendary 1967 album  Born Under a Bad Sign  which contained the brilliant  Crosscut Saw ,  The Hunter  (covered by Free),  Oh Pretty Woman  (covered by Gary Moore) and the title track (covered by Cream).       Nicknamed The Velvet Bulldozer due to his huge size but sweet singing voice, Albert played simply but beautifully on his 1958 Gibson Flying V. You can hear huge slabs of him in the pl

        Being the last guy to leave a band before they settle into their consensus “classic” lineup is a rough lot for any musician. This was also the case with one Tony Kaye , the founding keyboardist of a little prog rock band from London called Yes. Kaye, who turns 76 today, recorded three albums with Yes. Then he got shitcanned for being reluctant to play any more of these newfangled synthesizers. Kaye was not nearly as flashy as his eventual replacement, and Yes was all about pomp and flash as the 70s soldiered on. Kaye preferred a relatively small set-up of piano and Hammond organ, with some splashes of Moog for colour. Kaye bounced around in the 70s, recording with a couple of prog supergroups, including Flash (co-founded by another ex-Yes member, Peter Banks) and Badger (a prog band with a strong boogie-rock streak) . He'd then join Badfinger, of all bands, before returning to Yes just as they were becoming bona fide pop stars. He's still busy, playing in a to

        If his band Nektar was better-known, Ron Howden would be recognized as one of the great prog drummers. He can do the kind of heavy pulse that  Pink Floyd ’s Nick Mason specializes in, but is also good at surprise fills and quick bursts of energy. Listen to the storm he conjures up in the “Confusion” jam that closes part one of  Remember the Future . Now in his mid-70s, Howden was still at full strength when Nektar did a rare US tour in early 2020. NEKTAR Sunday Night At London Roundhouse Bacillus,2002 cd1..... https://www.sendspace.com/file/qyts49 cd2..... https://www.sendspace.com/file/8px0zf